How
by Penny Wishes
Summary: I run my hand through your red hair feeling the brittle scars on the tips of my fingers and I want to cry. It was all over, we were safe, we were ALIVE, but then how come you seemed so dead to me?


**Disclaimer**: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.  
  
**Ratin**g: PG  
  
**Summary**: Ron is injured after the war, but even after being "healed" he's still a different person.   
  
**A/N**: Ok, angsty, but way more romantic then most of my fics. Not really based on the Lisa Loeb song "how" but with a couple of key phrases seeing as I wrote this after listening to the song. Don't own that song btw.

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**How******   
  
I didn't come this far for you to make this hard. You make this difficult, as if easy is dangerous, because everything in our pasts have been so, so completely difficult, that this, yes this, must be too.   
  
You ask me: "How?" "How is this going to work Hermione?" "How can we ever have anything after...?"   
  
I'm about to answer, angry, but I don't. How can I explain this to you Ronald Weasley, lying there in the sickeningly clean, sickeningly white, hospital bed? Your eyes are dark and quiet, why are you so quiet? Why no jokes? Why no nagging, no incredibly insensitive comments? Why no mumbling? Why no complaints? Just "How?"  
  
My heart beats in my ears, I know how red my face must be and you sit there quiet, lost. Only you make my heart beat like this, and that's what I want to say, "How does my heart beat? How do I breath?" But I don't I just sit down next to your bed, as you are already falling back asleep.   
  
And I want to ask you questions, questions that will never make it out of my mouth, and into your head.   
  
"Why did this happen?" I say it out loud knowing the words will be lost to you. You're already gone. I run my hand through your red hair feeling the brittle scars on the tips of my fingers and I want to cry. It was all over, we were safe, we were _alive_, but then how come you seemed so dead to me?

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The doctors had said you'd have a full recovery and I'd been so thrilled, I'd come in here and told you I loved you, and you'd just stared at me like I'd gone insane.   
  
"Why'd you come here?" You'd asked through a hoarse and cracked voice. I didn't answer, thrown off and you'd told me to leave. "You were on the outside- Stay on the outside." And I'd been so thrown off, so incredibly crushed, but I kept coming back every day. The doctors said you may have some initial problems, you'd get confused easy, and it gave me hope, but sometimes I thought maybe you hadn't been mistaken that first night.   
  
"You were on the outside- Stay on the outside."   
  
As weeks went by little bits of you returned, from playing wizards chess with Harry, to eating sweets your mother sent, I had hope that soon all of you would return, and when the doctors let you go I thought you had returned, our Ron, the knight.   
  
I had tried to talk to you then one of those days that Ginny had called and asked me to come over to help you with things.   
  
"How are you feeling?" I had asked slowly watching you intently as you stumbled towards the couch in your brand new flat, leaning heavily on your cane.  
  
"How does it look like I'm feeling?" You had replied letting yourself fall backwards onto the couch.   
  
"Well, at least your home, right? I- Well Harry and I both, we were worried." Your eyes closed in pain and I jumped up from where I sat to attend to your pain.   
  
"Where's my potion?" You had asked tightly and I had poured some into a goblet holding it at your trembling lips. You drank it deeply your body relaxing slowly as it raced through your system.   
  
"Thanks," You had said softly wiping your mouth on the back of your sleeve and breathing deeply. The silence extended and you slumped back letting your head hang slightly to one side.   
  
"No problem," I finally replied way too late, it was a disconnected answer, your thanks already forgotten and to be honest I don't even know if you actually said "thanks" or if maybe I had imagined it. You were so quiet the rest of the day and it scared me, but I tried to ignore it, hoping maybe you were just tired, all the time your words in the back of my head "Stay on the outside."   
  
I visited you as often as possible, sitting in the background as you cracked your knuckles, you did it mindlessly sitting there, all of the sudden you twitch and the crack would seem to echo. It always drove me nuts, scared me really, but you didn't seem to notice.   
  
"How come you always come visit me?" you'd asked one day, it had been the third time in a week I'd come to see you, and the first thing you'd said to me directly in months. I swallowed knowing this was it, the time, the moment.  
  
"I, I love you Ron, and I know this is hard for you... I just figure you need as much support as you can get." you'd sat there thinking this over, your eyes blank.   
  
"But I'm not Ron. Not the Ron you love," You had started slowly, "I can tell, I'm a disappointment I'm..." You searched for a word as I held my breath, "Broken."   
  
"Don't say that," I had said breathlessly. I leaned toward him, and he cracked his neck loudly. "You _are_ the Ron I love," You stared at me eyes squinted.   
  
"No. I'm not."   
  
The next day Harry had found you lying on the floor with all your scars re-opened, a knife bloodied, staining your soft white carpeting, and drove you to St. Mungos, and I still visit you daily.

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"When your healthy again things can go back to the way they were before you got sick," I say softly as I sit on the corner of your bed, holding your limp hand.   
  
"How?" your question still lingers in my head even though you've been asleep now for an hour.   
  
"How can I not be with you?" I ask myself and your eyelashes flicker, your eyes opening slowly and your hand tightens around mine, squeezing slightly.   
  
How does my heart beat? How do I breath?

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Enjoy! Please review! 


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